Game of Thrones’ Final Season Could Have All Feature-Length Episodes

The final two seasons of Game of Thrones are set to be shorter than previous installments of the series—down from the usual 10 episodes to 7 for the seventh season, and 6 for the eighth. But that doesn’t mean that we’ll necessarily be getting any less of the show. We already know that three of Season 7’s episodes run longer than an hour, and at this weekend’s Con of Thrones, sound designer Paula Fairfield told the crowd that the Powers That Be might make all six episodes of Season 8 feature-length.

Fairfield noted that the finale of Season 7, which begins this month, will run 82 minutes long—making it the longest Game of Thrones episode to date. While most episodes in Season 7 will otherwise stick to around 59 minutes, the following season may consist of, essentially, six movie-long episodes—i.e., 80 minutes or longer.

While we obviously can’t know the run-times of Season 8’s episodes until they’ve actually been shot, a conservative estimate would put the entirety of Season 8 at about eight or nine hours long. Which is basically a full season of Game of Thrones, even if there are only six episodes! And, since it looks as if all the disparate threads of the narrative will gradually be coming together over the course of Season 7, it makes sense for the episodes to grow longer as well. This show likes to take its time with those usually once-a-season episodes set in only one location—“Blackwater,” “Battle of the Bastards”—and perhaps the elongated run-times are an indication that we can expect more of these focused installments in the future.

Regardless of what it means for the story, though, if what Fairfield says is true, we’re getting almost twice as much of this series in the final season than we thought we would.